At a joint exhibition, Yevhenii Maloletka and Mstislav Chernov show Mariupol, which was mercilessly bombed and shelled, according to various estimates, about 300,000 people were trapped there.
The dead mostly just lay on the streets. There were no funerals. No memorials. No public gatherings to honor those who died during Russia's relentless attacks on the port city that has become a symbol of Ukraine's fierce resistance. It was too dangerous. Instead, the authorities piled the bodies into trucks as best they could and buried them in narrow trenches dug in the frozen ground of Mariupol, which has been dubbed the second Aleppo. This is how the joint exhibition of Ukrainian documentary photographers is described on the Visa pour l'Image page.
At the joint exhibition “Mariupol, Ukraine”, Yevhenii Maloletka and Mstislav Chernov, who work for the Associated Press, show the city of Mariupol, which was under siege by Russian troops in the first days of the offensive. It was mercilessly bombed and shelled and cut off from the rest of the world, with an estimated 300,000 people trapped there.
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The mass graves told about the city under siege. An 18-month-old baby hit by shrapnel is buried there; A 16-year-old boy was killed by an explosion while playing football; a girl no older than six who was rushed to the hospital wearing bloody pajamas with a pattern of unicorns. There was a woman wrapped in a sheet, her feet neatly tied at the ankles with a piece of white cloth.
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The workers threw them all into the trench, moving quickly to return to cover before the next round of fire. The world would not have seen any of this if not for Mstislav Chernov and Yevhen Maloletka, Ukrainian photographers who rushed to the city when the invasion began. And he remained long after Mariupol became one of the most dangerous places on earth.
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For more than two weeks, they were the only international media in the city and the only journalists who could transmit video and photos to the outside world. They were there when the girl in the unicorn pajamas was rushed to the hospital. They were there after the attack on the maternity hospital and during the countless airstrikes that scattered the city. They were there when armed men began to haunt the city in search of those who could prove that Russia's narrative was false.
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It was scary to leave. They knew that once they left, there would be almost no independent reporting from the city. But they felt they had no choice. So they left, slipping away on a day when thousands of civilians were fleeing the city, passing Russian checkpoints one by one.
Read also: Tortured with water, cauterized wounds: defenders of Mariupol told about torture in the captivity of the Russian Federation
Their work and the people they met speak about the agony of Mariupol. Like a doctor who tried to save the life of a girl in pajamas. As he pumped her with oxygen, he looked straight at the AP camera. He exploded with obscene rage: “Show this to Putin: the eyes of this child and the doctors who are crying!”
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We will remind you that at the end of spring, in May, Maloletka and Chernov received the Deutsche Welle Prize “For Freedom of Speech” and also became laureates of the Georgy Gongadze Prize.
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